Posted by
huangsq
18 yrs ago
Just got an offer to move to HK. For those of you move from US to HK, do you see the working hours and work loads are more than you had in US, in general?
My impression is that Asian people tend to have longer lunch or go out dinner with clients, and count those as working hours, so you feel it's long.
Any insights will be greatly appreciated.
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Unless you enjoy working long, hard hours, do not come to Hong Kong.
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Can't comment on the difference between US and HK but as an observation on HK hours generally I would have thought that this depends on the industry you are in as much as location. For me, the hours in HK are less than what I was doing in the UK - in both cases in a law firm.
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Surprised to read the notes from lawyers here, the lawyers that I know work 20 hour days and sleep little - with no social or private life. I am talking about working for large int'l law firms.
Same goes for banking, work for agencies, in fact most other decent jobs out there. The expectations in HK are different, people live for work, and as much as expats are known to have a more laid-back attitude, if you yourself are not a boss and are going to work in a mixed team, you might find it hard to balance your life.
Generally I find it is also because the teams and budgets in Asia are much smaller when compared to the US / EU, so less people have to get same amount of work done... which eqauls longer hours.
On the other hand, I know some expats working in advertising or publishing, and they tend to be doing good hours, mostly because their whole team is expat and times really haven't changed there much over the past 10 years.
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an an expat, i do not work any harder here than in the US. The local Hong Kong people do though because they have this compultion to impress the boss by being the last to leave the office, it's quite commical actually. The other Americans in our office leave when we need to leave, reguardless of who is still around. Our work speaks for oouselves, not how much time we put in.
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JAR1
18 yrs ago
I work less hours in HK than I did in the UK in a management position. Locals will work extraordinary long hours but mostly to impress rather than by need.
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I am in the same law firm I was working for in London and the hours overall (on an average basis over the year) are less in HK than in London. I am also in a big international firm. What I will say is that there is more emphasis to work weekends here and we have more late night conference calls (due to time differences between HK and US/UK). That would be something that huangsq needs to take into account as if you are working for a US firm, there will be late night conference calls with your colleagues for sure. In London, the emphasis was on working through the night (often 40 plus hours straight) in order to save your weekend. In HK I have certainly done less all nighters but well more weekends.
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